In these convulsive times, the Italian architect PAOLO RIANI represents a model of architecture that does not require the search for new paradigms that preoccupies theorists and professionals of this subject. His lengthy and wide-ranging activity in uncharted territories is, in the first place, a demonstration of expertise and thus a confirmation of his impassioned love of his profession. But it is also the realisation of a very elaborate, rigorous process, a sustained effort, a carefully balanced combination of culture and technique, all leading to a creative and pleasurable result.

Patient investigation in the period of his training at university was followed by his first projects, then experimentation and renunciation, always with the presence of risk, always a certain disenchantment, and always, unceasingly, exploration of place in the broadest sense, of inhabited place and the people who enjoy or suffer it. This is the path he has pursued in order to “interpret the present and construct the future”, a lovely phrase that succinctly sums up this architect’s life and the instruments of his architectural work.

Although he has never renounced his Tuscan roots, PAOLO RIANI has roamed all over the world to create his own “world of architectures”, the world that we are shown here now. His explorations were first made in books and in the classroom, in museums and in his teachers’ lessons; then in geography, in towns and foreign lands, and especially in relation with the people living in them. Europe, America and Japan, Moscow and Arabia, mountains, sea and desert sand, stone and asphalt, and, above all, people – always people – are the materials on which his hands work after capturing them in his camera lens.

The walls of the Pinazo Room are now inhabited by objects and items that allow us to experience emotions and certainties of similar intensity: the initial sketches and the magnificent photographs of the finished work, small-scale models and notebooks used in the supervision of projects, fantastic wooden propellers and the collection of miniature planes that keep the memory of his father always alive, documents that acknowledge his achievements and awards, and the testimony of his constant commitment to architecture.

There is not just one world in the imaginative universe of PAOLO RIANI. There is a world of worlds that he has been exploring ever since his youth – a youth that he extends effortlessly and with ease. And if the world is not foreign to him, geographically speaking, since he has been travelling round it for some considerable time, there are other versions that he also does not find strange, more abstract, more poetic, spiritual or physical, but always human. Worlds of shapes, colours, textures, tastes and savours, and of feelings; very human worlds, of very human people.

José María Lozano Velasco